


Sweet Potato

by flippyspoon



Series: Pour Some Sugar on Me [42]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 12:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16933155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flippyspoon/pseuds/flippyspoon
Summary: Billy buys a new family with a $2.00 pie from Bradley's Big Buy. Steve is pleased.





	Sweet Potato

It doesn’t occur to Billy until he’s parked in front of the Byers’ that they would have heard the car drive up. That means he doesn’t have much time to gather his nerves. He won’t be able to finish his cigarette before Steve will be coming out, tromping through the ankle-deep snow to investigate.

They’d had a fight.

“I’m not going to your stupid neighborhood monster fighting club nerd Christmas party, Steve. Hate to break it to you.” He’d said it bitingly, glaring at Steve as he got dressed in Steve’s bedroom.

Steve had looked so heartbroken, sitting there naked. Billy couldn’t figure out why. Yes, things were a whole lot different than they had been in December of 1984, and he and Steve were not only boning but dating, and a few months ago Billy had nearly been killed saving Lucas Sinclair and he’d even shared a few cigarettes with Chief Hopper, but that didn’t mean he went to their little get togethers or responded with anything but an annoyed grunt most of the time when any of the brats spoke to him. Max, he could make some time for. And Steve, well, Billy would do just about anything for Steve. Anything _important_. But…

“It’s Christmas,” Steve had said softly, gazing up at Billy with his big sad eyes.

“That doesn’t change anything,” Billy had grumbled, storming out. The whole thing made him… He didn’t quite know what the feeling was. A tiny kid part of him was afraid he’d get used to the idea of a warmhouse where people enjoyed his company. He couldn’t count on things like _that_. He’d been lucky enough to get Steve (getting Steve had been a goddamn miracle), he couldn’t push that luck any further.

Billy had felt shitty about the whole thing for days because Steve seemed so sad about it and what bugged him most was that Steve seemed sad for Billy and not for himself. Like Billy was denying himself some important thing. That was annoying.

Billy waited until six o’clock. The Christmas dinner at the Byers was supposed to start at five. At six he said, “ _Shit_ ,” and stubbed out his cigarette and turned off Black Sabbath. Neil and Susan were away visiting some family friend. Max was, of course, at the Byers’. Billy had hid in his room when Jonathan had come to pick her up.

Okay, maybe his house had felt even more empty and lonely and uncaring than usual. Billy actually worried for one second that he had nothing to wear to something like a Christmas dinner...and then he found a deep blue sweater that Susan had given him. 

_Ugh_.

He knew as he got himself ready that he wasn’t just doing this because it was lonely and it was Christmas. He was doing this because he loved Steve. He loved Steve so much he felt like he was stashing large quantities of some illegal substance sometimes.

_What am I going to do with all this Steve Love on my hands? Somebody’s going to find it, it’s impossible to hide._

He loved Steve more than he hated feeling uncomfortable because Eleven always looked at him like she knew him and didn’t run away, and Mrs. Byers always made him feel like he was nine again and missing his mom, and Steve standing right in the middle of all of it made him feel like he was growing new organs he’d always needed and not known it. And he loved Steve more than he was afraid of it all, he supposed.

He put it on and couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror. He grabbed his jacket and his keys and slammed his door on the way out.

Billy went to Bradley’s Big Buy and brought a sweet potato pie in the bakery for $2.00 because he didn’t know anything but he knew you were supposed to bring some stupid thing with you when you went to a Christmas party in Indiana.

Now he was sitting in the driver’s seat of his Camaro, clutching the wooden box, the cardboard getting crushed because he didn’t realize how hard he was gripping it as he felt himself full of a fear he couldn’t name.

The lights were all on inside the house. He saw faces peeking through the curtains and felt a strange déjà vu.

The front door was thrown open and Lucas Sinclair appeared wearing a truly heinous green Christmas sweater.

“Hey, Hargrove! You comin’ in or what! We saved you a plate! Dustin’s gonna eat it if you don’t move your ass!”

“I will not!” Henderson popped up next to him, shoving his shoulder, and Sinclair ran down the steps into the snow to form a ball and throw it at his best friend.

Billy felt a bit like he was closing the door of not just the Camaro as he got out and stepped into the snow but a part of his whole life, and was opening a new one.

“Good you’re here, now Steve can stop sulking,” Henderson reported. 

Billy chewed his bottom lip and grasping for something to say that would sound normal blurted out, “Don’t eat my goddamn food, Henderson. I’m starving to death!”

“Pft.” Sinclair rolled his eyes. “He wouldn’t really. Steve would kill him. He was gonna bring it to you even if you didn’t come.”

He swallowed his smile. “Where’s Mrs. Byers?”

“Kitchen!” Sinclair said, just as a snowball smacked his chest. “HEY, YOU’RE DEAD, DUSTIN!”

Inside the house Billy felt a wall of warmth about to crush him, not just the toastiness as he took off his jacket and hung it on the smothered coat rack, but a general feeling. The place looked nearly as crazy as it had the night he’d beaten Steve to a pulp except that this time it was positively saturated with Christmas; the very lights that Billy had heard were used to talk to her son in the Upside Down now strung along shelves, construction paper garlands hung from corner to corner, a somewhat lopsided and modest tree made almost garish with handmade ornaments and yet more lights, paper cut-outs of Santa and reindeer and elves and nutcrackers colored with crayon stood in any spare space. 

Jazzy Christmas music played. Nat King Cole, Billy thought, but he wasn’t sure. He stood trying to look inconspicuous in the shadow of the door as he took in the scene. The rest of the kids and Jonathan and Nancy were crowded around the coffee table still eating as they played some board game and talked over each other, occasionally bursting into laughter. Eleven sat in a rocking chair near them, rocking back and forth, happily pushing off the floor with her Mary Janed feet as she watched them all with bright eyes. She was wearing a Santa hat on her mass of brown curls, Mike Wheeler hunched right next to her, gazing adoringly.

In the kitchen, Chief Hopper was dancing _badly_ to the music, grinning as he attempted to get Joyce Byers to join him while she straightened up the kitchen and the table ammassed with platters of half-eaten food, and now he spun her around and she ended up facing his direction.

“Billy!” Mrs. Byers said. He cleared his throat, eyes shifty, and found himself walking into the kitchen. Hopper tossed him a friendly nod.

“Hey, kid,” Hopper said. He always called Billy “kid” like Billy was one of the middle-schoolers and it made him feel weird but not bad and it was confusing.

“I’m so glad you came!” Mrs. Byers said. “We have plenty left for you! Steve made a plate. Said he knows what you like best.” She spun again, her hands fluttering like antennae feeling out the food put aside for him.

He had intended to be charming and smooth, to not betray his nerves. Instead he shuffled his feet and swallowed and said, “Um...I brought a pie?” He held out the half-demolished pie box and his cheeks burned.

Mrs. Byers beamed at him. “Oh, perfect! I knew we needed more desserts! Is that sweet potato? I _love_ sweet potato!” She took it from him as if it were a great and important gift and not something he’d picked up for two dollars at Bradley’s Big Buy. “Thank you, sweetie! Here, let me get you a seat-”

“Billy.” There was so much noise in the house and yet he heard Steve whispering his name behind him. Billy turned and shoved his hands in his pockets and took them out again and straightened his stupid sweater and felt stupid and in love and too warm. 

“Hey.” Billy ran a hand through his hair. “I...brought a pie.”

If Mrs. Byers beamed, Steve lit up the entire room. For a giddy second Billy thought all the lights might pop, some circuit would short for how electric Steve grinned at him like Billy had hung the moon itself. Which was weird because Steve was the actual sun and the moon wasn’t so impressive next to that beautiful sun. 

“I knew you’d come,” Steve said. “Deep down I knew.” Billy’s heart felt so big suddenly that he clutched his chest, not knowing he was doing it.

Everyone seemed quiet now, watching them maybe. It made him self-conscious, but looking straight at Steve, and reasonably sure that nobody was reading his lips he mouthed, “I love you.”

Steve’s eyes sparkled and he nodded and ran a hand through his hair, maybe unconsciously mirroring Billy’s gesture. He stepped forward and muttered, “Me too” as he joined Billy, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Made you a plate… We still got enough to feed an army so it should be almost enough for you.”

“Haha. Dickhead,” Billy said, even as he felt Steve wrap a blonde curl around his finger.

All the conversation sprung back into place, the party continuing, and just like that Billy felt like maybe he belonged there with Steve solid and standing up next to him.

And later when things were quieter, everyone else still chatting and having desserts and coffee and cocoa in the living room, Billy was leaning in the backdoor smoking when he felt an arm snake around his waist. He smiled to himself when Steve pressed a kiss to his neck.

“I’m gonna call you sweet potato from now on,” Steve said, sounding sleepy and happy. 

Billy turned a little, leaning into his embrace, dropping his cigarette on the icy back porch. “Do I look like a sweet potato?” But he smiled again when he said it.

Steve bit his lip and looked him up and down; El had put a braid in his hair, the deep blue sweater that brought out his eyes now had a lemon curd stain on it courtesy of Dustin, and there was a lipstick kiss still on his cheek from Mrs. Byers.

“Yeah,” Steve said. “You are an absolutely sweet potato. Hey look, mistletoe,” he murmured, without looking up. He leaned forward and kissed Billy, slow and sweet and tasting of coffee and cinnamon.

Billy glanced up at the doorway. “There’s no mistletoe.”

“I know.” He ducked his head and grinned into Billy’s neck and squeezed him tight. “You’re such a sweet potato.”


End file.
